In response to the operation of a user, a typical image forming apparatus causes a scanner to read a document image, and stores image data from the scanned document image in a hard disk (HDD) serving as an auxiliary storage device. The typical image forming apparatus notifies a personal computer (PC) of preparation completion, and reads out the image data from the hard disk to a memory buffer and transmits the image data to the PC, in response to an image data request from the PC. Owing to this configuration, a scanner-driven push operation is performed.
The image data read by the scanner-driven push operation is stored in a box (folder) within the HDD, and the image data is transmitted from the image forming apparatus to the PC.
However, it may be difficult for an inexpensive image forming apparatus to realize the scanner-driven push operation if the image forming apparatus has no HDD and a small memory capacity.